I think it's time, as we kick off a new work week, I think it's appropriate that we take a moment to reflect upon all the hard work and dedication of the "small heroes" amongst us - the everyday heroes whose incessant and frenetic toil helps make Fark.com what it is:

missmarsha:funny. your feigned misunderstanding of my point,actually places emphasis on my point. its easier to dismiss the comment than take a google moment or 2 to seek out some ethnic diversity for this particular post. why should you..? you arent racist... you have plenty of Black friends and you love Jay-Z and Darius Rucker... ;-0 trust me, I get it. its not Drew's to make everyone happy, comfortable or welcome. its Drew's, he can run it as he wishes. i just thought he may appreciate the feedback.

Let me let you in on something from the perspective of a masculine, hetero male:

Women that "conform to a rigid notion of physical attractiveness" are definitely attention-grabbing, but if that's all they have going for them, that attention isn't kept very long and we move on. Women who are more than their looks, such as being a scientist or musician or having something else they pursue with passion, command rapt attention far after "whoa, she's hot!"

Further, the woman of substance and intelligence who doesn't "conform to a rigid notion of physical attractiveness" can still be sexy. Men like young hotties and always will -- we're men, dammit -- we love women who are smart, good-hearted, and shore up our confidence. Those things are far sexier to us. And the neat thing is, all women who exhibit those qualities are physically beautiful; it just takes us a little more time to notice it.

Give me a homely astronomer over a vapid bikini model any day. The latter would be fun for about a week, but soon become boring; the former would be fun for a lifetime.

A sexy brain outweighs a sexy body any day of the week. Want proof? Ask your male coworkers who they think the sexiest actresses are. I guarantee you'll get more good actresses that are attractive (ex: Natalie Portman) than crappy actresses with all the right curves (ex: Megan Fox). That tells you we like female synaptic activity, even if we fall (way) short on recognizing it publicly.

/amy mainzer FTW//let's not forget about danica mckellar///ok, she's a math geek, but that's just as sexy

Son of a biatch, are smart women hot! Woo. Too bad it's hard to find them fully realized, at least in the US. My new job has a girl from Romania who is our circuit board designer. Despite her bad English, she's very attractive to me because of her intelligence. And, you know, general good looks. But the brains is what is interesting.

/Possibly the Romanian, as well, but that's the 'seeking genetic diversity for mating' talking.

Rebecca Saxe.BA in Psychology from Oxford.PhD in Cognitive Science from MIT.

Here's something to consider: intelligence is a gift, a genetic gift. You couldn't take some random person at birth and put them in a super-special environment and make them as smart as Dr. Saxe. I'm not suggesting that we couldn't better people's chances by bettering their environment - oh no, I know that a lot of people don't have the opportunities she had. I'm just saying that even with those opportunities, few people would achieve what she has achieved.

Intelligence is a genetic gift.Attractiveness is also a genetic gift.

Why is it offensive to point to one gift and say, "wow, good for her!" and not offensive to point to the other gift and say, "wow, good for her"

The place where it does kind of bother me is when people make stupid science puns (as in, the headline).

All rather sexy ladies. Wouldn't kick any of them out of bed for eating cookies. A bit skinny on most of them though, so I'd probably provide the cookies.

I question #3's inclusion, though. She's certainly attractive, but doesn't make my eyes pop and go WOW! She looks like the girlfriend of the most normal person in your D&D group, who he convinced to sit in on a session and she immediately decided to make a paladin based on Sailor Moon (when she'd totally be a Warlock or Sorcerer, pay attention people!)

Ahem.

Anyway, should probably make a list of attractive male scientists in the name of fairness. I'm not a woman, but from what I understand about women P.Z. Myers probably would make that list. Women love an older, well-dressed, quirky, intelligent gentleman. Any ladies wish to confirm?

Tofu:Here's something to consider: intelligence is a gift, a genetic gift. You couldn't take some random person at birth and put them in a super-special environment and make them as smart as Dr. Saxe. I'm not suggesting that we couldn't better people's chances by bettering their environment - oh no, I know that a lot of people don't have the opportunities she had. I'm just saying that even with those opportunities, few people would achieve what she has achieved.

That's incorrect. Adopted siblings show no more correlation in intelligence than strangers. But siblings and twins raised in the same family, too. And it's not just nurture, either. There's a growing body of evidence that infectious disease rates has a significant bearing on intelligence.

Babwa Wawa:Adopted siblings show no more correlation in intelligence than strangers. But siblings and twins raised in the same family, too.

Actually, the largest investigation of intelligence in separated twins is the Bouchard study from 1979. It found a significant correlation (on the order of 76%) in scores between twins. There was a 0% correlation among strangers.

Babwa Wawa:There's a growing body of evidence that infectious disease rates has a significant bearing on intelligence.

Yeah, I also saw an interesting study that showed that if your grandparents had survived just one year of famine that had an effect on you. I know that it's very complicated and that we don't fully understand it.

But I stand by the assertion that some part of intelligence is genetically determined. You may have noticed that the smartest dog (or chimpanzee, pick any animal you like) is not as intelligent as the average human. They have different genes than we do and it limits their individual potential.

I guess my point is that if you accept the obvious fact that you are smarter than a dog, and you accept the obvious explanation that the difference between you and the dog is mostly genetic, then it's not too far a stretch to suspect the same thing applies within the species.

I think that most people reject this idea, not on its merits, but out of fear that it'll be used to justify racism. That mostly just shows that they don't know much about evolution. There's so much variation from one generation to another that it doesn't matter a whole lot to an individual if your parents were geniuses or idiots. It matters to the group but not to the individual.

Lernaeus:Want proof? Ask your male coworkers who they think the sexiest actresses are. I guarantee you'll get more good actresses that are attractive (ex: Natalie Portman) than crappy actresses with all the right curves (ex: Megan Fox).

Smells like a flawed study. Probability would predict a 50% correlation for binary comparisons among strangers. Anything that would reduce correlation among strangers to 0% would be of such tight-ass tolerance that twin correlation would be equally 0%.

Speaking of flawed studies, there's a reason why sexy scientists are hard to find: Because they use their brains for their careers. That's neither a contradiction nor an outrage.

If you're looking for supermodels, every serious applicant is going to look good, because that's where the money's at. Brains are of secondary importance, so it's not particularly likely a supermodel is smart (else it increases the odds they'll do something else for a living), though nothing's stopping them. But if you're going to pursue a career in modeling, whether you're a genius or a retard, you'd better look smoking hot.

Apply that backwards. I've met scientists who were drop-dead gorgeous. You aren't aware of them because they're not famous, for two reasons: One, they looked good because they were still young and just starting out, and two, you only get famous in academia if you're published -- which usually takes time. Looks aren't even of secondary importance; it's of no importance, so it's not particularly likely a famous scientist will be physically attractive.

It's absurd to be surprised a female scientist may not be physically attractive, but that doesn't mean scientists are generally less attractive than any other career that doesn't depend entirely on looks for success. It just means looks flat-out don't matter -- it's a meritocracy -- so looks don't prevent ugly scientists from becoming famous. In both cases, knockout geniuses will always be a tiny minority.

LasersHurt:Son of a biatch, are smart women hot! Woo. Too bad it's hard to find them fully realized, at least in the US. My new job has a girl from Romania who is our circuit board designer. Despite her bad English, she's very attractive to me because of her intelligence. And, you know, general good looks. But the brains is what is interesting.

/Possibly the Romanian, as well, but that's the 'seeking genetic diversity for mating' talking.

I too find women's brains to be their most interesting feature. That's why I throw away the rest of them. I have a sexy, sexy collection of women's brains in jars, here in my office.

Not to mention the fact that it was great to see a TV presenter who could actually see through pseudo-scientific nonsense when it was being spouted by some people she interviewed for the "Incredible Human Journey".